CELL - IQ CELL-IQ is a fully integrated continuous live cell imaging and analysis platform, ideal for use with cell lines, primary cells, co-cultures and mono-layer tissue models.  It is a research tool with a difference, Cell-IQ can be trained to see what you see and quantifies results automatically. Cell-IQ combines long term cell incubation conditions with phase contrast imaging and Machine Vision Technology to automatically identify, analyse and quantify cell morphological features.  While many of these techniques are used independently, Cell-IQ is the first system that combines cell visualization with Machine Vision Technology.

The three components of Cell-IQ:

• The cell growth environmental chamber, where microplates or culture flasks can be maintained under optimal growth conditions of gas, humidity and temperature within Cell-IQ for days or even months
• The optics system comprising of a microscope, light source and camera for recording time lapse digital images and
• The Cell-IQ Analyzer software utilizing machine vision to automatically identify and quantify cell types.  Cell-IQ not only produces quality cell images, it reports true quantitative data of cell types and cell numbers in tables and graphs. 

Cells are maintained in the proper environment of temperature, humidity and gas that makes long term observation possible.  Microplates, slides or other culture vessels can be placed in the Cell-IQ for sequential analysis.  The software enables the user to select the location and area to be imaged within each well, specify how long to measure and how often to cycle through the plate or entire plates.  This is accomplished automatically by using accurate plate positioning and automatic "all-in-one" focusing that compensates for any variation in the plate structure.
 
Whatever your cell biology needs, Cell-IQ will become an invaluable member of your team.

CELL-IQ Applications
 
Cell-IQ can be used for study a plethora of applications from angiogenesis, toxicity studies to stem cell differentiation.  The researcher can record and analyse simple parameters, such as total number of cells present in the sample to more complex situations where a heterogeneous population of cells are being studied where data is required on all of the cell types present in the sample are required together with data on the number of cells in each phase of the cell cycle throughout the experiment.

For simplicity the applications have been grouped into five main categories:

CelLite Multi-Label Fluorescence Module : While there are significant advantages to label-free analysis, the use of labels or dyes yields additional information.  For this reason, Cell-IQ also has an option for measuring fluorescence output.  Overlaying the fluorescence and phase contrast images yields even greater information of living cells. As research needs develop CelLite can easily be added to your system in the field.  CelLite offers you the opportunity to visualize cells with phase contrast and three different fluorescent colors in combination overlaying one, two or all three fluorescent images on the phase contrast as required.

Technology

Cell-IQ makes use of several unique technologies for:

• Maintaing cells in an optimum environment for growth and development
• Capturing images of superior quality and
• Analysing automatically the data generated by the Cell-IQ Imagen software
    

Optimum Cell Maintenance
To enable cells thrive inside the Cell-IQ incubator a special lid, Cell-Secure, has been designed and patent for use with the system.  The Cell-Secure lid has both inlet and outlet ports allowing gas to be delivered directly to each culture plate.  Direct delivery to the plate and not the incubator guarantees fast and accuarte delivery to the cells and significantly reduces the amount of gas required for each experiment.  Hunidity can be controlled by use of an external bubble chamber or half filling spaces between the wells with water before sealing the plate.   Both temperature and gas flow are monitored and recorded during each experiment.  This data can be saved for future reference.

All-in -focus Imaging
When are taken with the Cell-IQ the system scans through the cells (z-stack) taking images as regular intervals e.g. 1 micrometer appart.  These images are then combined to produce an all-in-focus single result image which recorded.  All-in-focus images are of superior quality as all of the imformation contained within the z-stack images is compressed into the final product.

Automated Analysis
Cell-IQ Analyser software ultisizes a technology known as Machine Vision (a form of artificial intelligence) to identify and quantify cell type and phases.  Machine vision is new to the biological sciences, but is a well established method in high speed and high precision electronics manufacturing.  To use machine vision, a cell expert identifies and names the cell types of interest. These images are used to teach Cell-IQ to automatically identify the cell morphologies of interest.  As a rule, any cell type that can be identified by a scientist using a microscope can be identified by Cell-IQ.

There are two particularly important features that make Cell-IQ unique:

• First,  experts can be used to make the initial identification of the cell types.  Once this expertise is translated into machine vision identification, the results are accurate, reproducible and consistent not only from day to day, but between operators, labs or distant sites. 
• Secondly, the digital images are stored so they can be easily shared or re-evaluated.  For example, if an unexpected event occurs in an experiment, such as the differentiation of an unanticipated cell type, the program can be modified to identify this new cell type.  The experiment does not have to be re-run with the inevitable variation that occurs with cell culture.  Rather, the stored images are re-evaluated with the new parameters.

While accurate and consistent results are important in basic research, they are absolutely critical in the development of human stem cell therapy.       Cell-IQ delivers these results

Cell-IQ Brochure Cell-IQ Specifications

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